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2025 - Volume 9 - Number 1

Dependency and Vulnerability Argument in Care Ethics and the Moral Justification of Human Genome Editing

Ndukaku Okorie * ORCID: 0000-0003-3098-3303
Obafemi Awolowo University, Department of Philosophy, Ile-Ife, NIGERIA

Dapo Daniel Shaola
Obafemi Awolowo University, Department of Philosophy, Ile-Ife, NIGERIA

Open Journal for Studies in Philosophy, 2025, 9(1), 1-18 * https://doi.org/10.32591/coas.ojsp.0901.01001o
Received: 10 January 2025 ▪ Revised: 27 April 2025 ▪ Accepted: 1 July 2025

LICENCE: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

ARTICLE (Full Text - PDF)

ABSTRACT:
Care ethics is a normative ethics that holds, among other things, that moral notions centres on human interpersonal relationships and care as a virtue. It concerns itself mainly with caring relationships. The problem of Human Genome Editing (HGE) raises different moral issues and different attempts has been made from the consequentialist (utilitarian) and non-consequentialist (deontological) perspectives for their justification but not satisfactorily. This paper aims to argue that care ethics provides a better alternative moral justification for HGE. In doing this, the paper will use dependency and vulnerability argument in care ethics. If this is successfully argued, it will show that care ethics provides a better alternative means of moral justification of HGE in Bioethics.

KEY WORDS: human genome editing, care ethics, moral justification.

CORRESPONDING AUTHOR:
Ndukaku Okorie, Obafemi Awolowo University, Department of Philosophy, Ile-Ife, NIGERIA.

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